have you ever seen an episode of it's always sunny in philadelphia? the show is regularly far more offensive than any line in airplane, and nobody cares.
Including blackface, which other threads are suggesting is just totally impossible to pull off. The reality is it's perfectly fine to do anything offensive so long as the the joke isn't just reinforcing those beliefs.
Not any different than the very common older, white racist character in sitcoms today. They're funny! Not because racism is funny, but because the unacceptability of their racism is funny.
I think it's actually pretty debatable, depending on what you count "longest running" to mean. Curb Your Enthusiasm has been on since 2000 but has taken years-long breaks. Is that longest running?
FWIW It's Always Sunny is, I believe, considered the longest running live action sitcom. Longest running sitcom overall is The Simpsons.
I can't see a critic taking that dictionary definition very seriously. If you had looked at Wikipedia instead, you'd see no animated show is discussed in the article on sitcom, suggesting animated shows are considered a separate genre.
If you opened a textbook on mass media, it might have a definition of sitcom that is more culturally relevant.
Not the longest running show... soap operas, and possibly some news programs, hold that title. For example, the soap 'Days of Our Lives' has been running since 1965.
I think the problem is that a lot of the humor in Airplane has aged like sour milk - it's not a comedy made to stand the test of time. Consider "Blazing Saddles", which does not suffer from this problem nearly as much and is 6 years older. I could see it getting made today just fine with a few tweaks.
> And Blazing Saddles is the poster child for "could not get made today" arguments.
Blazing Saddles was the poster child for that when many of the movies that argument is now made about were made, too.
Because its the kind of movie that could never be made, except that it was. And if there was a Mel Brooks-in-his-prime now, the modern equivalent (which, presumably, Blazing Samurai this year will not be) could get made today.
Not any different than the very common older, white racist character in sitcoms today. They're funny! Not because racism is funny, but because the unacceptability of their racism is funny.